Even now, Auschwitz kicks you in the gut

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We think we know all about the horrors of the worst place in the world. But a visit reveals we don’t know at all

Last week, under a lovely old oak tree at Auschwitz-Birkenau, just down the track from where the gas chambers used to be, next to the building where the SS would strip and delouse all the families they weren’t planning, immediately, to kill, I picked up an acorn. I thought it might be something to fiddle with, because you want something to fiddle with at Auschwitz. It was old, though, and sticky, and when I dropped it again I couldn’t quite rub my fingers clean. And afterwards, as I trudged back through the horrible cold, past the endless, endless huts, it